Dr. John C. Reddy

Home  “I saiah answered, “This is the LORD’s sign to you that the LORD will do what he has promised : Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?”   “It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” said Hezekiah. “Rather, have it go back ten steps.” Then the prophet Isaiah called on the LORD, and the LORD made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz. ”   [2 Kings 20: 9-11 ]  Put Your House in Order  H ezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.  He held fast to the LORD and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses.  And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the LORD says: Put your ...

Home  “ S uddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.  His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.”   [Daniel 5:5-6]  Weighed in the balances and found wanting...  K ing Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them.  So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Belshazz...

Home  “ F or if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”   [Luke 23:31]  Which side of the cross are you on?  J esus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then    “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”    and to the hills, “Cover us!”’  For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Jesus Himself was the green tree, and unbelieving Israel was the dry. If the Romans heaped such shame and suffering on the sinless, innocent Son of God, what dreadful punishment would fall on the guilty murderers of God's beloved Son?  Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called ...

Home  “ S o when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.”   [Genesis 37:28]  "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good"  W hen Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?”  So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said. But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me...

Home  “ M y friends, I want you to remember the message that I preached and that you believed and trusted. You will be saved by this message , if you hold firmly to it. But if you don't, your faith was all for nothing. I told you the most important part of the message exactly as it was told to me. That part is:  Christ died for our sins ,   as the Scriptures say.  He was buried, and three days later    he was raised to life ,    as the Scriptures say.  Christ appeared to Peter,  then to the twelve. After this, he appeared  to more than five hundred other followers.    Most of them are still alive,  but some have died. He also appeared to James, and then to all of the apostles. Finally, he appeared to me, even though I am like someone who was born at the wrong time. I am the least important of all the apostles. In fact, I caused so much trouble for God's church that I don't even deserve to be called a...

Home  “ We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God." When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.  He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.”   [John 19:7-11]  Pilate's Verdict: “NOT GUILTY, still Condemned”  T he religious trial was ended, and the civil trial is about to begin. The scene is the hall of judgment or the place of the governor. The Jews did not want to go into the palace of a Gentile. They felt that they would have been defiled and would thus be prevented from eating the Passover.  It did not seem to bother them that they were plotting the dea...

Home  “ God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.”   [Exodus 3:15]  "I have heard them crying out...."   M oses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. In tending the flock of Jethro, Moses learned valuable lessons about leading God's people. When he went to Horeb (Mount Sinai), the Lord appeared to him in a bush that burned with fire but was not consumed.  Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”  And Moses said, “Here I am.”  “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off y...